


Stigmata

by sudapigrafool



Category: 30 Seconds to Mars
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-17
Updated: 2014-03-17
Packaged: 2018-01-16 02:38:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 590
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1328806
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sudapigrafool/pseuds/sudapigrafool
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Authorship: Polydeuces<br/>Summary: Matt cut his finger right before the start of the tour; Jared has dreams about sharks; Matt's POV; 2006 orig.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Stigmata

There was a moment when I thought you understood.

Your eyes ignited with cold fire as your fingers traced over my scar.

I had reached for your hand, and…

I don’t know why I did it. Habit, I suppose, in an unguarded moment. For a long time now I have been avoiding your touch judiciously. Avoiding touching you intentionally. Sometimes, though, it can’t be avoided. Like when we pass one another in the narrow aisle of the bus, or when we all crowd into the lounge together. On stage, your lonely hands pass over me publicly; pressing their anxious, yearning advantage.

You looked down at our unexpected moment of contact and clutched my fingers. I stilled the urge to flinch away, trying instead to reach an understanding. Hoping it would not rob me of too much this time, to let you fill yourself with my touch. It was only your hand, after all. Sometimes, I can sense how the rest of you aches for me.

That’s when you saw it; the angry red line of scar tissue stretching across the end of my fingertip; a tomb seal lying over a spot of numbness. And in that instant, I thought, you knew. Wish to God my heart would scar over that way, so nothing might be left for the sensations you evoke in me to reach.

"Tyr," you murmured.

"Yes."

You did understand.

"I did it for you," I told you quietly. We’d slipped beyond pretenses, somehow. Your lips trembled, and your eyes filled to overflowing. I know, because although you wouldn’t look at me, their soft rain fell down the front of your shirt.

"Why?"

Why did I make the sacrifice?

"To bind the power of evil in your world." To shackle Fenris. So that nothing more would hurt you. You’d hurt yourself so much already. You’d hurt Shannon, and you’d hurt me. I know now that was never your intention.

"It was _your_ blood in the water…" I could barely hear your voice.

"What? …Say again?"

"I had a dream." You turned my hand over in your own, like you’d seen a miracle.

"About the sharks?"

"Yes." I know about that because one day, wrestling with his own despair, Shannon had told me.

"They came for the blood." There was horror in your tone.

"Hush." I took the rest of you in a firm grasp and folded you into my arms. You were trembling, but there was vitality to it. "It was only a dream," I whispered.

Your finger worked back and forth over that stubborn ridge in the end of mine. There, where the flesh has knit together, it is as hard as a callous. And strong.

What I really want to feel in my heart is not the hardness, but the strength. They say that a noble sacrifice can do that for a man. Give him the necessary strength, come what may. I do not feel noble. I feel broken, and humbled.

Now, I am thinking the strength of a man’s heart is best measured, perhaps, by its tenderness. In that you have exceeded me. You are vulnerable and woundable to a fault. Yet, how deeply I hurt, when cut to the quick.

You raised my wounded finger to your lips, to your mouth. It is my heart; I watched you take it into yourself.

As if the blood might still be fresh and you could taste it.

This is my body.

This is my surrender.

Betray me, if you must, but do not deny me.

\-- end --


End file.
